Chapter Seventeen- Keys
“Harrow…” A whisper cuts into my dreamless sleep. “Harrow!” Someone swats at me.
“What?” I groan and blink away the sunlight.
To my horror, I realize it’s Thorne and that I’ve got my arms wrapped around him. I push him away, rolling him onto his face. The situation is worsened by my morning erection—which is obviously completely natural and has nothing to do with the man in my bed.
“I wasn’t complaining…” He gives me his back. “But isn’t it time for morning drills or whatever it is you knights do at this ungodly hour?”
He’s right. It’s only been a few hours since he drunkenly arrived, but I’m still late.
“Fuck.” I tumble out of bed. “And stop flirting with me,” I snipe at him.
I pull my pants on over my now aching erection and ignore the fact that he’s watching me.
“But it makes you squirm,” he stretches his arms and folds them behind his head.
“I need you to go to the treasury today while I ensure things run as normal with the guards posted.” I ignore his taunts.
“What am I going there for?”
His blue eyes shine from sleep, making them impossibly brighter in the morning sun. I want to jump into that bed with him and see how far I can push him, if he likes his hair pulled…
“Harrow?” My name, as always, is honey on his sinful tongue.
“There must be a key—or keys—stored in one of the vaults that will get us into the antechamber below the library,” I say.
I pull my training jacket over my shirt and he blinks at me in confusion.
“Which is where the Titan’s Kyanite is…” I clarify.
“Oh, well I can do that, but you should probably know that one key is around Aleksander’s neck and the other is in my father’s possession. Either there are more in the vault or it’s just those two that we need.”
“How do you know that…”
“They both have worn identical keys around their necks for as long as I can remember. Father doesn’t wear his as often, but what else could they be for?” He reasons.
I scrub my hands over my face in frustration.
“Then we’ll deal with Aleksander first, tonight.
” He nods his understanding. “I’ll try to dig up the Book of Binding to see if it mentions undoing binding magic.
Or at least how to destroy the Kyanite. Since you don’t have to go to the treasury, go ask Zianthe in the archives about crystal binding scrolls,” I direct him. He nods.
The palace boasts many small libraries, one for staff, one in the royal children’s wing, one for the King, one for the Queen, and then a main library.
The main library soars into the sky and dives deep underground.
I have to crane my neck all the way back to see the dark ceiling where Paper Sprites are flying back and forth shelving books.
They’re a flurry of colors and I suspect some of them were brought here via Julien’s and Julius’s escapades.
Especially because some of them are definitely Basket Sprites. I can’t help but to grin.
Deep, dark cherry wood makes up the structures around me.
Shelves rise high with various levels of stacks upon stacks of books crowding my vision.
I’ve only been here a few times; Knights only frequent the Warrior’s Library near the training grounds as it is full of relevant material to our lifestyle. This. This is magnificent.
The lack of dust astounds me. It doesn’t matter where I run my fingertips, there’s no dust—even on the older books that show clear signs of wear.
They are kept perfectly clean. The windows are a kaleidoscope of stained glass, spelled to keep the sun from damaging the books but to still allow in natural light.
By about midday, I’ve flipped through two books and a grimoire before Gasha, Keeper of Texts, finds The Book of Binding.
She swats at Crowley, informing me that he needs to be in the rafters, not on the tables.
“Bindings have not been popular since the fall of Xeusis. What has drawn your interest?” The old woman’s voice lilts as she cranes her neck over the grimoire I’m reading. Her hawk nose casts a shadow over her wrinkled mouth.
“Call it curiosity,” I smirk.
“You’ll do well to remember that King Mortem forbade them a hundred years ago, Sir Darkbloom,” she raises gray eyebrows at me in warning, dropping the book with a thunk before hobbling off. I heard, once, that she’s lived in this library since the days of Xeusis’s reign.
That would make her over five hundred. She could easily be that old, if she possessed some kind of magic to keep her life infinite. But that’s unheard of. Perhaps she is a ghost, haunting this place and seeing to its well being.
King Mortem Shadowfall, son of King Phoenix, would be King Dreven’s grandfather. I would credit Mortem with instilling greed and authoritarian ideals into this once free-spirited kingdom.
When I turn my attention to the book, I frown to find the title written in a language too old for me to know. Fuck. As I start to flip through it, my heart sinks at the pages upon pages of old language script.
It’s not the Titan’s language, not quite, though it seems to be a fragmented or unused version of it. As I scan through it, I look for words I recognize.
Death.
Ending.
Blood.
Renew.
Well, that’s not helpful.
Though, towards the end of the book, I find a chapter with sketches of creatures.
There are Unseen Hunters once called Isthryen with their eyes hanging from fleshy chords.
They grow out of the ground and set upon people in a flash.
The only way to keep them sleeping safely in the soil is to periodically use blood magic in the dead fields where they reside.
I shudder at the carefully detailed image of a Fleshglut, which was known in the ancient language as a Vhelbrakjar.
Luckily, I have never encountered one. They are the plague given life, from the dark period of time after the fall of the Titans, known as The Age of Severance.
Made up primarily of dark magic, dripping flesh, and oozing puss, the large creatures sloshed around.
They spread their infections and proved resistant to most Arcanist attacks.
Settlements knew they were coming by their smell alone, as it was carried on the wind like a warning.
The thought nauseates me as I ponder why the hell it has so many nipples.
The plague it set loose on humans and Arcanists alike rotted them from the inside out.
Intestines were said to trail out of people by the time they died, twitching and feverish in a pool of blood, puke, and puss.
Healers had to evolve their magic to fight it, though they succumbed to the sickness quickly.
Their caretaking roles placed them in the path of the contagion but they had no choice. It had to be fought.
Ultimately, before the wars and the grand divide, it was aid from Frostguard that stopped it. The freezing magic stopped the plague in its tracks. Their warriors put down the Fleshglut and hundreds of infected individuals to stop the spread.
Then I come across the Nharuk’tel, or, as I know it, the Noctispecter. My eyes blow wide as I’m hit with the realization that this book must be written in the language that Thorne used with the Noctispecter. I snap the book closed and push up from the table.